


what lies beyond

by sybil



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 15:39:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybil/pseuds/sybil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike mourning the death of Buffy. (Season 5/6)</p>
            </blockquote>





	what lies beyond

When she died the sound was bled from the air.

That golden mane of hair that always gleamed and flashed like some proud banner seemed duller now, threaded with a dull red seeping from her shattered skull. For a brief moment his brain refuses to process the information, it does not and cannot compute or translate into anything that he can even remotely understand. His legs are swept out from under him and a blistering heat sears his chest, the heels of his hands are driven into his eyes.  _I failed._ _  
_

Everyone is stricken, everyone is grieving.

What the story books fail to relay is that the hero (or heroine) does not always live happily ever after. That villains are not always flat, predictable and easy to defeat. There is always an aftermath and this one is is rending him in two. He is the one that carries her body away from the destruction, he is the one that visits her grave every night afterward while 'making his rounds.'  _It's just a hole, she isn't there._

The days drag on and on without her and before he realizes it a month has passed.

A month has passed and he still keeps his last promise to Buffy, shadows Little Bit's every step and in doing so he becomes involved in the inner workings of the Scoobies. Begins remembering details about each extremely annoying person and finds himself laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Why did he ever allow himself to get fixated on someone?

_It's just like you to be just out of my reach._

* * *

Every night his subconscious tortures him with his own ineptitude and shows him what could have been and just when he starts to believe it he is shown the reality again.

Her corpse draped over broken concrete, a streak of crimson blood on her face. _Gone, gone, gone._ Two months later and Anya finally asks him the question he's sure the rest of the Scoobies have wondered at one point or another.

"How is it that you love without a soul? I mean, isn't that required?" He knows by now not to take it personally, at least her questions are always straight-forward and you never have to guess at what she thinks because she'll just come right out and tell you. The world needed more people like her, the scathing blasts of realism were a wake up call when things started getting on the whimsical side.

"I don't know."

* * *

So when he sees her again, sees her alive and the lights gone out from her eyes he thinks this is just another dream. Just another cruel torment designed to send him spiralling into madness but there is blood on her knuckles, real blood that sings the way her blood used to. But she doesn't smell the same, honey warmth and streaks of sunlight and when he takes her hands in his she  _feels_ different too.

The dusty, dead heart in his chest seems to squeeze a little too tightly for his liking and he wonders briefly if maybe a soul is a bit like a ghost limb, if maybe traces of it aren't left behind. Maybe it's all just a figment, a flight of fancy...but if they are those fragments belong to her.

**Author's Note:**

> First Spike/Buffy fic I ever wrote and it's a one-shot. Re-watching BTVS and this is what happens after watching the season five finale because it never fails to make me cry like a little bitch.


End file.
